Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 December 2008 10:02:52
I am off in a few moments to a funeral I'd rather not be going to. I've made the decision to walk - it's a good way to the crematorium but it will give me time to get my volatile emotions under control and also, as parking there's a nightmare and the carpark will be packed, it allows me to escape early with no fear of being blocked in.
It is hard to come to terms with the loss of someone who was more of a friend than I realised. It was only when she took early retirement from work last July that I really realised how much I would miss her. Little did I know that that would be the last time I'd see her. The Smudgelet loved her to bits, and she always had a real soft spot for him - when I took him into school with me when his school was closed and I was working, he'd always end up in her room, curled up in a beanbag and listening to stories. She was one of the best loved members of our school staff, I think. Her room being next to mine, we were always walking through and sharing a moment, a whinge about school politics, and her frequent comment "I so wish you'd been my maths teacher, I'd have left school actually understanding something and enjoying maths instead of hating it" meant more to me than a dozen positive OFSTED observations. And our bond was a close one as her husband was in the hospital and the hospice with my dad and died shortly afterwards.
She was just beginning to live again.
And then she fell down the stairs last week and her daughter found her, dead.
I can't tell the Smudgelet where I'm going today - his sense of permanence is damaged enough already. So this is a secret funeral and I just pray that God will hold my hand and give me the strength to stay right through, to support my friends and give true thanks for a friend that I didn't realise I had.